GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS by John Dwyer

GOOD MORNING – TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, December 06, the 340th day of 2017 with 25 to follow. Sunrise in the Boston area is @ 6:58 and sunset is @ 4:10. The moon is waning. The morning stars are stars are Jupiter, Saturn & Mercury. The evening stars are Mars, Neptune, Uranus & Venus.

ON THIS DAY IN: 1774 – Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.

1790 – The U.S. Congress moved from New York to Philadelphia.

1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.

1876 – The city of Anaheim was incorporated for a second time.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramophone, with a recording of himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.

1883 – “Ladies’ Home Journal” was published for the first time.

1884 – The construction of the Washington Monument was completed by Army engineers. The project took 34 years.

1889 – Jefferson Davis died in New Orleans. He was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America.

1992 – In India, thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque. The following two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting resulted in at least 2,000 people being killed.

1993 – Former priest James R. Porter was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison. Porter had admitted molesting 28 children in the 1960s.

1994 – Orange County, CA, filed for bankruptcy protection due to investment losses of about $2 billion. The county is one of the richest in the U.S. and became the largest municipality to file for bankruptcy.

1997 – A Russian Antonov 124 military transport crashed into a residential area in Irkutsk, Russia, shortly after takeoff. 70 people were killed.

1998 – In Venezuela, former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was elected president. He had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier.

1998 – Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour connected the first two building blocks of the international space station in the shuttle cargo bay.

2002 – Winona Ryder was sentenced to 36 months of probation and 480 hours of community service stemming from her conviction for shoplifting from Saks Fifth Avenue. She was also ordered to pay $10,000 in fines and restitution.

2002 – Officials released the detailed plans for a $4.7 million memorial commemorating Princess Diana. The large oval fountain was planned to be constructed in London’s Hyde Park.